


a final glimpse

by perfectlyrose



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5741824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlyrose/pseuds/perfectlyrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's dying and all he wants is to see her one last time. (a slightly altered goodbye scene from TEOT)</p>
            </blockquote>





	a final glimpse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> for the @timepetalsprompts weekly ficlet prompt provided by @kevinkillgrave : “Ten/Rose angst with the line Please forgive me”
> 
> this is set during The End of Time Part II when Ten goes back to see Rose.
> 
> (Sorry Lisa)

He was dying. The universe had actually given him warning this time, reminding him every time he turned around that his bloody song was ending.

Knowing it was coming didn’t make it any easier.

Thoughts and regrets raced through his head at lightning speed, spurred on by the adrenaline pumping through his body in a fruitless effort to ward off the pain. 

(He could feel the fire burning in his veins, licking at his bones, waiting to burst out of him in a burst of gold and end this life in which he’d known love and loss and friendship and turn him into someone new.)

He hit the lever to dematerialize the TARDIS one last time on his farewell tour. He had to see her one more time, had to have that one last glimpse. Seeing her couldn’t kill him after all - he was already dying.

The Doctor stumbled out into the snow. It was proper snow this time, nothing like the ash he’d stood in when this body was new and he’d been so nervous about her staying and accepting him.

(It had been a less than auspicious start, a hand hold and a smile with the remnants of death and destruction falling around them.)

(Maybe the universe had been telling him then that it could never end well, that he was already dying from his first day.)

He waited in the shadows for her to pass, desperately repressing his imminent regeneration. Just one glimpse, that’s all he needed. Nothing that would threaten the timeline, he just had to see her.

Then she was there, impossibly young with a smile that was as bright as a supernova and had just as much power to destroy him.

(When she turned around after hearing him and sent that smile his way with all of her compassion and kindness but no recognition in her eyes, he thought that maybe this glimpse really would kill him.)

He watched her walk away and couldn’t help the words falling out of his mouth. “Please forgive me.” It was half a whisper but she still turned around with a puzzled look.

“What was that?”

He just shook his head and tried to smile instead of grimace. Rose had always tried to help him shoulder his guilt and his burdens, tried to give him all the forgiveness she could grant and it was instinct to seek it one last time.

A final request from a dying man. A Time Lord seeking absolution from a slip of a girl, a human, to try and wipe the bloodstains from his soul.

It was laughable and yet….

“Please forgive me,” he repeated.

She peered at him, no doubt thinking once again that he was drunk.

“Alright, mate. I don’t know what you need to be forgiven for but you seem like a pretty decent bloke so…if I can forgive you, you’re forgiven.”

The Doctor almost crumbled to the ground. A tiny bit of his weight of guilt lifted even as he was crushed under grief. His love was here, she was here and alive and in front of him and he couldn’t say any of the things he’d always swallowed down.

She gave him one last smile and then ran to the doors of her building.

He choked on the glass shards of words left unsaid (I love you, I miss you, I wish I hadn’t ever let you go) and dragged his bleeding heart and dying body back to his TARDIS.

It was time for his song to end.


End file.
